Does using a felt mat or a cork mat on your turntable make a difference to the sound produced by your record player.
Acrylic mat vs cork.
When you place a record directly onto the acrylic surface without a slip mat the record is effectively coupled with the playing surface.
The base laayer is a 1 16 thick cork base while the surface is peppered with 1 16 spheres hence giving the entire cork turntable mat to have a thickness of 1 8.
Felt and cork mats however are much more delicate.
Corkery decoupled cork n rubber turntable platter mat.
They require a dry cleaning method.
Cork this natural and inexpensive material helps reduce slipping of a record and also makes it easy to lift your records right off the mat without having to separate the layers like you might with the fabric or rubber mats.
When buying a mat get one at a pocket friendly price and with good.
Again made by hudson hi fi this corkery decoupled cork n rubber turntable platter mat proves to be unique in its own sense.
Acrylic if you have the option but if you need i do as i use a vintage pioneer tt that i love a slipmat go buckskin all the way.
This cork turntable mat consisted of two layers.
Any extra sounds can be further dampened due to the acrylic mat being the same material as a record.
They sound incredible very low static or noise and nobody knows about them so they are super affordable.
This makes acrylic far better at controlling resonance generated by the stylus scrubbing in the record groove than traditional felt cork or leather mats.
In turn this results in better performance.
Cost is dependent on the quality of the materials the way in which the mat was made.
It is an age old debate as to which one.
However acrylic and rubber mats are by far the easiest to clean.
The cork rubber and glass mats are affordable.
The acrylic cork rubber and leather are more costly.